Women Take Issue

First published in 2006. Women Take Issue draws on collective and individual research by members of the Women's Studies Group at the Centre. It concentrates on the problems of analysing women's subordination in Britain.The book opens with a retrospective article which comes to grips with the problem of doing feminist intellectual work through the experience of the Women's Studies Group. This is followed by an analysis of some aspects of the early women's movement. In the third section economic approaches to the basis of women's oppression are examined for their usefulness and limitations. The second half of the book includes articles on: - The culture of teenage girls - Young working class women at home - Woman - the problem of femininity as constructed in this magazine - Women's reproductive role through class and history - Anthropology - Women, kinship structures and family. This combination of theoretical work and contemporary case studies engages constructively with the traditions of cultural analysis from a feminist perspective, and contributes to the study of women's situation in Britain.

The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) was a research centre at the University of Birmingham. It is notable for producing many key studies and researchers in the field of Cultural Studies. It was founded in 1964 by Richard Hoggart, who became the first centre director. The Cultural Studies department at the University of Birmingham was closed in 2002.

1. Women's Studies Group: trying to do intellectual work Editorial Group 2. 'It is well known that by nature women are inclined to be ratehr personal' Charlotte Brunsdon 3. Women 'inside and outside' the relations of production Lucy Bland, Charlotte Brunsdon, Dorothy Hobson, Janice Winship 4. Housewives: isolation as oppression Dorothy Hobson 5. Working class girls and the culture of femininity Angela McRobbie 6. Psychoanalysis and the cultural acquisition of sexuality and subjectivity Steve Burniston, Frank Mort, Christine Weedon 7. A Women's World: Woman - an ideology of femininity Janice Winship 8. Relations of reproduction: approaches through anthropology Lucy Bland, Rachel Harrison, Frank Mort, Christine Weedon 9. Shirley: relations of reproduction and the ideology of romance Rachel Harrison Bibliography Index